Talking With Children About Death

Why we read those seasons-changing books to the youngest.

Along with picturebooks about the alphabet, sleep-monsters, Goodnight, Moon, and Love You Forever, there are many books about seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter. Though they tell the same story over and over, still they sell, and still we buy, drawn to them. Why?

Night-time reading pile

You know the books! With the sweetest illustrations ever — playing in snow and leaves and spring rain puddle boots.

For my three sons, there was one with ink and color drawing — cheering — and a watercolor, end-of-day, softening one. There was also the revolving door of library offerings. We chose, more often than not, a season book as the closer to the evening’s reads. And always I sensed a bit of peace wrapping around us then, before the final kiss and tuck in.

Even if we never use the word

It always struck me how, after words and images about the seasons, my boys were ready for sleep.

Just writing that, I feel a shiver. But I believe it is the reassuring quality of those circuitous barely-story threads from those books that allow the child to pick up on how life evolves, how seasons change, return, cycle. What it means to grow, build, know foundations. And pass along the baton.

Dust to dust, without ever spelling it out. It’s as reassuring for the adult reader as it is for the child; even if we, humans, do not go on, life itself will. As parents, we have given life to our young, and they will to another someday, possibly, even if it’s a beloved dog they take care of, or an art form they choose to embrace.

And then

When my boys were barely young men, they lost their dad.

Even though we never overtly spoke of those books — we didn’t need to — the words were in us.

Their father was diagnosed in spring, with ALS, and through the summer months that followed, he managed to play golf, and have evenings with family on the patio. As golf season wound down, so did his capacity to play the game. We collectively withdrew indoors, to our home with floor to ceiling windows, and always a connection with the natural world. We watched the leaves change, and the wind bring them to the ground. By winter, he was using a walker, and appreciating the fireplace.

How the disease progressed with the seasons was not lost on me. It hearkened to some pattern we didn’t speak to, except the time that he mentioned — as I was putting away his clubs — how grateful he was for his summer.

Sometimes images from those long ago books came to mind. As months passed, I wondered if my boys had this imprinting, too. With a terminal illness, there’s a need to grow acceptance, and a different sort of hope: the sort that knows that while life will never be the same, it will hold a steadiness that we can reach out for, like the tow rope in that picture of winter ski slope… It’ll carry us up the hill.

To open

Almost immediately after the birth of my oldest son, I became aware of the sense of Responsibility that now hovered over me. I’d brought another human into the world. Suddenly every jagged edge stood out, every stair was cliff top, and… stop, I told myself.

Becoming a parent was terrifying, even as it was enlivening and wondrous. I felt raw and blessed. I knew we would grow and connect and disconnect and grow more. There would be natural and necessary waxing and waning of love as he came to know who he was, and as I grew, too. Love is given, and accepted, spurned and earned.

I always knew, as I read those words to my children, that I was reading them for myself, too. To everything there is a season. We’ve been reading these words for a long, long time.

To protect

Read to strengthen for what might come and grow. To prepare for life, to seek joy in it, to appreciate. To be reminded, always, never to take for granted. Those seemingly simple season books hold wisdom.

Winter will come around again, with celebrations of light in its depths.

Spring will come again, too.